Remember the last time you were at a concert or sporting event and the noise there was so loud that you had trouble understanding what the person next to you was saying? Now imagine that you’re one of the soldiers or sailors who find themselves locked in the chaos of combat and are trying to understand the orders that are coming to you over the radio.

While misunderstanding someone at a concert or sporting event is inconvenient, not being able to understand messages that are being relayed in a combat situation can be deadly. That is why for more than a century military forces all over the world have worked on ways to improve the accuracy of the way they communicate over the radio or telephone.

Before the days of phonetic alphabets, members of the military spelling out words to ensure accuracy would still run into problems when, for instance, a P was mistaken for a B, or an M for an N. Then, in 1901, a U.S. Navy telegraph operator named Richard H. Geiger came up with the idea of using words to represent letters helping to clarify communications even in the chaos of combat. Geiger’s idea caught on and soon different forms of it were being used all over the world.

Along with the growing use of radio communication during WWI came the urgent need for the troops to be able to have a standardized phonetic alphabet with which to work. Prior to the Great War, British troops had words for only a few letters: Ack, Beer, Emma, Plp, Esses, Tac and Vic.

It’s strange that the long-defunct abridged alphabet’s word for E sounds like it begins with an M and that the word for S begins with a silent E. Interestingly, Vic remains in today’s phonetic alphabet – sort of – as Victor. By the end of the war in 1918 both U.S. and British forces had developed complete (and separate) phonetic alphabets.

Another small step toward the current version of the phonetic alphabet was the standardized one created by the International Telegraph Union. It was designed to accommodate the needs of international communications and was made up mainly of the names of cities around the world.

It seems to me some of the words selected for use by the ITU were less than user-friendly. For instance it can’t be that easy to remember or pronounce words such a Uppsala (a city in Sweden) and Xanthippe (the shrewish wife of Socrates and a word that Merriam-Webster defines as “an ill-tempered woman.”) And the “word” for N is two words: New York.

Despite its drawbacks, within a decade most of the world’s commercial airlines were using the ITU Alphabet. One of its words, Quebec, even made the cut and appears in the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alphabet. A couple other words that also sort of made it are Kilogramme, which has been shortened to Kilo, and maybe Roma, which today is Romeo.

In 1941 the U.S. Army largely ignored the ITU phonetic alphabet and developed its own, which became known as the Able Baker Alphabet after its first two letters. The whole alphabet is: Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox, George, How, Item, Jig, King, Love, Mike, Nan, Oboe, Peter, Queen, Roger, Sugar, Tare, Uncle, Victor, William, X-ray, Yoke and Zebra.

Of all the words used in the Able Baker Alphabet, only Charlie, Mike, Victor and X-ray remain in the current NATO Alphabet – while Fox was replaced with Foxtrot.

A big step toward the creation of the current NATO Alphabet came in 1951 when the International Air Transport Association (which is now the International Civil Aviation Organization) developed one that was easy to use for not only English-speaking people but for those who spoke Spanish or French as well.

The entire IATA Alphabet is: Alfa, Bravo, Coca, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Gold, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Metro, Nectar, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Union, Victor, Whiskey, eXtra, Yankee and Zulu.

Finally, on Feb. 21, 1956, NATO adopted the IATA’s phonetic alphabet but with the following half-dozen changes: Coca became Charlie, Gold turned into Golf, Metro morphed into Mike, Nectar became November, Union changed into Uniform and eXtra turned into X-ray.

Today, all branches of our military, all NATO countries and all airlines around the world use the same phonetic alphabet. And now you know your (phonetic) ABCs.

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at [email protected].